Bryan Gould

Who is Bryan Gould?

Bryan Charles Gould, CNZM is a former United Kingdom politician. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1974 to 1979, and again from 1983 to 1994. He was a member of the Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet from 1986 to 1994, and stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the party in 1992.

Gould currently holds a number of positions including director at TVNZ.

Gould was a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford from 1962. After completing a degree in Law with first-class honours, he joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1964. He then returned to Oxford as a tutorial Fellow in Law at Worcester College alongside Francis Reynolds.

Gould became Labour MP for Southampton Test in October 1974 and held the seat until 1979. He worked as a television journalist from 1979 to 1983, and was then elected as MP for Dagenham from 1983, holding the seat until he resigned on 17 May 1994.

Gould was a member of Neil Kinnock's Shadow Cabinet, serving first as Shadow Chief Secretary, then as spokesman on Trade and Industry, the Environment, and later on Heritage. In 1992 he founded the Full Employment Forum. Later that year he was defeated in the leadership election to succeed Kinnock after the general election, which Labour lost to the Conservative Party for the fourth election in succession. John Smith won the leadership contest, but Gould subsequently resigned from Smith's Shadow Cabinet in a dispute about policy on the European Union and departed from British politics.